Yet more newbie questions

[Jabby]

I've ordered a "Glo", expected next week, and have a couple of questions,

1-Is it possible to use the Glo without registering it?

2-Is the Glo compatible with ebooks bought from B&N or do I have to use ADE to transfer ebooks? Can I sideload non-DRM ebooks via USB?

3-I've heard that there is a problem with inter-paragraph line spacing. Doesn't the Glo honor the internal stylesheet?

Any help would be appreciated.

Jabby

[murg]

Originally Posted by Jabby

I've ordered a "Glo", expected next week, and have a couple of questions,

1-Is it possible to use the Glo without registering it?

2-Is the Glo compatible with ebooks bought from B&N or do I have to use ADE to transfer ebooks? Can I sideload non-DRM ebooks via USB?

3-I've heard that there is a problem with inter-paragraph line spacing. Doesn't the Glo honor the internal stylesheet?

Any help would be appreciated.

Jabby

1) Yes. But you have to do SQL commands to the database. There is a thread on here about this, I'm sure someone will post a link to it.

2) You have to use ADE. You can sideload non-DRM ebooks using USB.

3) I think it does honour the internal stylesheet. I have to reformat my books to have them formatted the way I like.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Jabby

3-I've heard that there is a problem with inter-paragraph line spacing. Doesn't the Glo honor the internal stylesheet?

Any help would be appreciated.

Jabby

The issue that some people have is that the Glo does honour the internal stylesheet. This leads to situations where an ebook was formatted with very wide margins and you can't reduce them below the stylesheet settings using the margin width slider. Or ridiculous line heights -- one ebook I looked at used a default line height of 1.66 so the text looked almost double spaced. One ebook a friend of mine had on his Mini had a 2.5cm wide blank band on each side of the display which doesn't leave much room for the text to display. A quick edit with Sigil and he had default margins of 0 and the ebook suddenly became readable.

As murg said and I second -- you will often edit the stylesheet to make the ebook look better on your device. Sigil and Calibre are very useful tools for that purpose.

Regards,
David

[PeterT]

And Apprentice Alf

[Mrs_Often]

3)

My problem with inter-paragraph line spacing is with how kepubs (books bought directly from Kobo and synced onto your device from the Kobo servers) display them. For some reason, all the Kobo books (at least all the ones I've bought) show up with a blank line between paragraphs. I hate that. That's not the way a novel or any fiction is ever 'layouted.' That's the way text books are formatted and perhaps some non-fiction... The strange thing is, that reading the same kepubs from my Kobo app on my iPhone, those blank lines aren't there. There is a slightly larger than 'normal' line height for a new paragraph, with an indent, the way it should be (although the slightly larger line height isn't really necessary). I've no idea why the ereaders decide to show a blank line.

That's one of the reasons I always sideload all my books, also the ones I buy from Kobo. The reader for the sideloaded books properly listens to what the stylesheet tells it.

[Jabby]

Thanks all !

Apprentice Alf, Sigil, and Calibre are old friends.

Hope I can use my Glo without having to register it.

Regards

[PeterT]

I'm not sure I understand the reluctance of people to register the device.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Jabby

Hope I can use my Glo without having to register it.

If you do register it you don't need to provide any personal information (probably less than you did to register for this forum). Just an email address and password I think, and it doesn't even need to be a real email address.

The main problem with not registering is that you will have to do some procedures in a different way to everyone else, so it may be harder to get help here if you need it.

[paola]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

If you do register it you don't need to provide any personal information (probably less than you did to register for this forum). Just an email address and password I think, and it doesn't even need to be a real email address.

The main problem with not registering is that you will have to do some procedures in a different way to everyone else, so it may be harder to get help here if you need it.

in addition, presumably there can be no sync with the Kobo account, meaning no kepub books, but only epub, right?

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by paola

in addition, presumably there can be no sync with the Kobo account, meaning no kepub books, but only epub, right?

Correct.

Which would eliminate any annoying kepub empty lines between paragraphs

[paola]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

Correct.

Which would eliminate any annoying kepub empty lines between paragraphs

in fact, at least in my case (and I only have a handful of Kobo books) I had one book which was a real pain to read, with many almost empty pages - but after that one book (can't remember the title, but will look into it) never had that problem again. I love the pop out footnotes, so I have to confess I love kepub.epub

[murg]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I'm not sure I understand the reluctance of people to register the device.

If you don't register the device, you are not agreeing to any of Kobo's agreements.

That's just the way they are written.

[PeterT]

Some people are known to have two different Kobo accounts; one for device registration and the other one for purchasing material from Kobo; this way the device and Desktop wool not download any kEpubs from Kobo.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by murg

If you don't register the device, you are not agreeing to any of Kobo's agreements.

That's just the way they are written.

You sure about that? Many products the act of opening the package accepts the agreements. I think people read way too much into ideas like this.

[BookBunny]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I'm not sure I understand the reluctance of people to register the device.

Easy: they don't want to be spied on by corporations.